The Pleasure
“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.”
—C.S. Lewis
There lies a map in the marked sky
and a compass names the wind
they know what the future holds and why
they wait for your ear, your eye
when you walk this world with the wind
when you read the marked sky.
There lives a song in the seas
and treasure in the scarped hills
rivers twist and bear their lees
from cleft gorges to the deltas’ ease
while you test the heights of the hills
while you roll with the waves in the seas.
There comes to meet you a singular friend
and that moment’s pleasure wrapped in signs:
the marked sky and arrow wind, the river bend
before the sea, the flake of gold and songs you send
down the track of time, binding the signs
in the halls of your mind to the gallery of your friend.
There comes a time, the wind still, the sky dark,
the hills left, the river lost in mother sea
when you know the pleasure’s touch on life’s arc
how it grew and blossomed and tendered its spark
to all that you lived as you sang by the sea
and you see it complete as you walk to the dark.
—Fred Hinchliffe
Still River Road
